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Our Service

Top Bananas Day Nursery and Pre-School aims to:

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  • provide high quality care and education for children;

  • work in partnership with parents to help children to learn and develop;

  • add to the life and well-being of the local community; and

  • offer children and their parents a service that promotes equality and values diversity.

Children's Development and Learning:

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We aim to ensure that each child:

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  • is in a safe and stimulating environment;

  • is given generous care and attention, because of our ratio of qualified staff to children, as well as volunteer helpers;

  • has the chance to join in with other children and adults to play, learn and grow together;

  • is helped to take forward her/his learning and development by being helped to build on what she/he already knows and can do;

  • has a key person who makes sure each child makes satisfying progress;

  • is in a setting that sees parents as partners in helping each child to learn and develop; and

  • is in a setting in which parents help to shape the service it offers.

Our approach to learning and development and assessment is:

 Learning through play

The Early Years Foundation Stage:

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Provision for the development and learning of children from birth to 5 years is guided by the Early Years Foundation Stage. Our provision reflects the four principles of the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage:

 

  • A Unique Child

Every child is a unique child who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured.

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  • Positive Relationships

Children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships.

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  • Enabling Environments

Children learn and develop well in enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs and there is a strong partnership between practitioners, parents and carers.

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  • Learning and Development

Children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates. The framework covers the education and care of all children in Early Years provision including children with special educational needs and disabilities.

The Early Years Outcomes guidance sets out the likely stages of progress a child makes along their progress towards the Early Learning Goals. Our setting has regard to these when we assess children and plan for their learning. Our programme supports children to develop the knowledge, skills and understanding they need for:

Prime Areas

Personal, Social and

Emotional Development

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  • self regulation 

  • managing self 

  • building relationships

Physical

Development

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  • gross motor skills

  • fine motor skills

Communication and

Language

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  • listening, attention and understanding 

  • speaking

Specific Areas

Literacy

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  • comprehension

  • word reading 

Mathematics

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  • number

  • numerical patterns

Understanding the World

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  • past and present 

  • people, culture and communities

  • the natural world

Expressive Arts and Design

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  • creating with materials 

  • being imaginative and expressive 

Characteristics of Effective Learning

 

We understand that all children engage with other people and their environment through the characteristics of effective learning that are described in the Early Years Foundation Stage as:

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  • playing and exploring - engagement;

  • active learning - motivation; and

  • creating and thinking critically - thinking.

For the children under two we focus on the three prime areas of the Early Foundation Stage Curriculum and with the Characteristics of Effective Learning we focus on Playing and Exploring- engagement. We also look at their different ways of learning which may link to a schema. By knowing about schemas we can recognise and support children’s urges and development.

Positioning

 

Do you find yourself Positioning things neatly into alignment on your desk, ordering the books on the self, getting creative when you plate the dinner or even just tidying-up.  Perhaps you see your child lining up their cars, making sure the whale is next to the cow, or turning all the cups upside down? 
The Positioning is a schema that is kept alive in us all.

Trajectory


The urge to throw, drop and other actions that are all part of the Trajectory schema.  Some other Trajectory actions are things like climbing up and jumping off (Trajectory of ones own body), putting your hand under running water (interacting with things that are already moving) and the classic, throwing and dropping (making it happen).  It can be diagonal, vertical or horizontal... this is a multi-dimensional urge, after all learning is based on movement in the first years of life.

Enclosure / Container

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The urge to fill up cups with water, climb into cardboard boxes or kitchen draws, build fences for the animals or to put all the animals inside the circular train track, it is the Enclosure/Container schema

Transporting

 

Transporting can be the urge to carry many things on your hands at one time, in jars, in buckets and baskets, or even better containers with wheels.

Enveloping

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To have a sheet over your head, wrapping things in fabrics or with tape and paper - all actions seen in the Enveloping schema. An extension of this is peek-a-boo, now you see it now you don't, a concept that just keeps on amusing.

Rotation

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Anything that goes around anything that is circular - wheels, turning lids, watching the washing machine on spin cycle, drawing circles, spinning around on the spot, being swung around. These are all experiences of the Rotation schema.

Transformation

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The urge to Transform can come in many forms; holding all your food in your mouth for a long time to see what it turns into, mixing your juice with your fish pie, water with dirt, or helping Granny with mixing the bread dough. It's only natural that once you have explored and learnt about a raw material you should want to do further testing... there is a scientist and a chef in everyone.

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